Words by Keith Arnold, who is touring the country with his brother Phil as they invade a different college campus each Saturday during the football season. They’ll be reporting back in this space with their various adventures. You can also keep tabs on their vagabonding over at RoadtoGameDay.com. This week they're in Norman for the Texas Tech-Oklahoma game.

We’re here in Norman, ready for our biggest game of the year so far when Texas Tech takes on Oklahoma tomorrow. There hasn’t been a harder ticket for us to get. We have zero connections in Lubbock and zero connections in Norman, and thankfully we haven’t had to spend much on tickets the last three weeks, because the prices for this game are insane. Who says we’re in a recession? But on the 15th eBay auction we bid on, we finally won tickets. It only cost us a kidney, two bags of plasma, and a few hundred bucks to get them. (Every other donor joke I came up with either made us look really bad or would’ve gotten edited anyway.) Sprinkle in the added degree of difficulty that the internet at this mediocre Days Inn we are staying at created, and I feel like I’m Glass Joe fighting Iron Mike Tyson in the first two minutes of Punchout. Just one slip and I’m down and out.

Is there anything that makes you feel like a loser more than winning an eBay auction? Holding my laptop in the air, thinking that it might help get the wireless signal better than it was two feet lower on the motel desk, and counting the seconds down as my top bid is holding on by a measly four dollars. After many near misses, Phil wasn’t even humoring me by counting along, as he just got called up to the first line on NHL ’09 for XBox 360, and he had his +/- rating to worry about. Needless to say, there isn’t a whole lot going on in this town.

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I won’t pretend to know enough about the economy in Puerto Rico to say for certain that $10 is a lot of money down there, but based on the turnout at The O’Reilly Auto Parts Puerto Rico Tip-Off, I’m gonna guess it is. Either that, or Puerto Ricans really, really don’t care about college basketball. Note the empty seats from the floor to the rafters in the background here as Seton Hall celebrates its upset victory over No. 20 USC:

As Larry Brown Sports notes, the 10 bucks I speak of is all it would’ve required for a day pass yesterday, which included the Seton Hall-USC game along with three other match-ups. One of those other match-ups featured Virginia Tech, whose senior guard A.D. Vassallo is a Puerto Rico native and is blogging (sort of) throughout the tournament. His thoughts on yesterday’s game:

There weren’t that many people in the stands for our game, so it wasn’t easy for everyone to get energized. It was important for us to win, so we didn’t need a crowd to get pumped up.

I mean, what is everyone in Puerto Rico doing if they aren’t indoors watching hoops ... you know, aside from enjoying the island’s legalized gambling, perfect 85 degree climate and beautiful white sand, crystal-clear-water beaches?

Gilbert and His Wax Self | D.C. Sports Bog
I bet you can't tell which one is doing nothing to help his team this season:



Wired Up: Fred Smoot | The Cooley Zone
Anytime Smoot speaks, you should be listening.

Rugby Fights Better Than Hockey Fights | With Leather
The last time I saw a knot that big, it was on Hasim Rahman's head.

Baseball Adds Postseason Weather Rule | Mouthpiece Sports
Bud Selig enacts new rule to save himself from looking stupid should another downpour occur in October.

Falling down, Crosby scores one for the highlight reel | Puck Daddy
We've now met our monthly quota of linking to something NHL related that doesn't involve a fight.

Last night, Texas Tech beat geographically confused East Central Oklahoma 167-115. That’s 282 total points in the normal 40 minutes of regulation. The 167 Texas Tech scored is one point less than the total of their first two games combined. The Red Raiders’ entire starting five scored in double-digits, along with five of their bench players. But here’s the best stat of the night: Between the two teams, a field goal was attempted every 5.175 seconds. Pat Knight is clearly taking Mike D’Antoni’s seven seconds or less philosophy to new heights.

After the game, Knight was pleased:

"I'm a big believer in confidence," Knight said. "We got 10 guys that score double figures. Proves to them they can at least put it in the bucket. Our defense is a little different. The game is just so different from anything. We're not going to face anything like this."

I’m not sure I’d call giving up 115 to East Central a confidence builder, although certainly Pat’s father is quite proud of his son’s commitment to defense.

Two of America’s most hated were in the same place at the same time last night when the NFL Network aired the first part of Deion Sanders’ interview with T.O. during halftime of the Bengals-Steelers game. The content of the interview is to be expected: Owens more or less saying that he needs to be more involved and the offensive scheme should be constructed around him. And you know, both of those statements are probably accurate. It’s the not saying them in public part that T.O. still doesn’t grasp.

But the content isn’t the most interesting part. As PFT points out, take a look at the shirt Owens decided to go with:

That looks strangely similar to any number of vintage Eagles t-shirts I’ve seen. Nah, it’s probably just some strange coincidence. Surely, a green shirt with an Eagle on it in no way made T.O. think of the football team he once scorned. He just looks good in that color.

See also: Shutdown Corner taks a closer look at Deion's sweater, which reminded us of our top 5 sporting sweaters of all-time. Sanders' bold fashion statement might crack any similar future list.